Deforestation and slave labour still linked to Brazilian cattle industry

A cattle farm in the Amazon - from the Greenpeace International report 'Slaughtering the Amazon'. Image: Daniel Beltrá

A 2 billian Reais lawsuit (that’s $900 million USD) was launched yesterday against 14 slaughterhouses in the Brazilian state of Acre. These slaughterhouses are being sued by the public prosecutor for buying cattle from farms who have been fined by the Brazilian Environmental Police for illegal deforestation, and from farmers who are accused of using slave labour. One of the slaughterhouses being sued is JBS – the largest exporter of meat products in the world.

JBS is also one of the slaughterhouses that signed an agreement in 2009 to commit itself to no longer buying meat from farms involved in deforestation, embargoed areas and slave labour. Having a lawsuit brought against it for doing exactly what it had committed not to do indicates that JBS and the wider cattle industry have not managed to progress much further in their commitments than making the initial promise. They have produced more nice words than concrete action to clean up their supply chains.

It was back in October of 2009 that the three largest slaughterhouses operating in the Amazon – which includes JBS – signed on to a public commitment to no longer buy from farms involved in new deforestation, slave labour, or cattle rearing that breached embargoed or protected areas. The commitment came after the release of the Greenpeace report ‘Slaughtering the Amazon’ which revealed the cattle industry as the largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon. International brands like Nike, Adidas and Timberland then demanded action from these slaughterhouses to ensure their products were not coming from deforestation and slave labour and the slaughterhouses finally committed.

Now the slaughterhouses need to act again - and publicly respond to the serious accusations they are facing. Until they provide verifiable and independent audits that prove they are keeping their commitments to deforestation and slave labour free products – then buying meat and leather from the Amazon region remains a risk for the international brands that are their customers.

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(Unregistered) Preeti
says:

Documentary - "This Man Will Die" is an investigative documentary that tells the story of 14 people marked for death in the small town of Ri...

Documentary - "This Man Will Die" is an investigative documentary that tells the story of 14 people marked for death in the small town of Rio Maria, southern Pará, Amazonia, Brazil. It tells tells the story of a public list that circulated in the city, a list that included all the people marked for death as well as the instigators. The conflict over land ownership is illegal in Amazonia, where large landowners evict tenants to take their land and instead use it for cattle grazing, thus generating large amounts of slave labor.

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(Unregistered) anne henriques
says:

check out this website and see what they're doing to the amazon rainforest..i grabbed a pice of the website intro here: Green heart is: green, life an...

check out this website and see what they're doing to the amazon rainforest..i grabbed a pice of the website intro here: Green heart is: green, life and truth. The Amazon rainforest is an organ, of a live planet, of which we cannot make use. Economy and Law do not obtain to find political answers for substitution of a natural organ for an artificial one. Independent of the intentions, effectively, that´s what´s going to happen and is happening. Either for the religion or our indifference in understanding that the man is the most enabled specie to revert a premature apocalypse… Throughout these two thousand years of history, what we perceive is that the man and the nature, think and act in a different form. No religious example functions with the nature. And no economic law applies to ecosystems, for a simple reason: the democracy protects only the man, not the nature, even more in a developing country, turned almost entirely for the agribusiness. The sustainability was not able to create a forbidden reserve model because of its democratic spirit of pleasing everyone. For the survival of the planet there has to be a more efficient separation between man and the nature in that region that diminishes the permissively. Ambient politics in the entire world only worked with reserves militarily protected. Viabilities, sustainability, works for small things, not for a territory with the Amazon dimensions. Accept a highway BR230 and BR319 in the principal arteries of that Green Heart is sentence this planet prematurely to death.

we can't treat amazon rainforest as equal to the savanas, amazon is a different kind of forest, even though democracy blocks the eyes of people. being different, it must be treated like different, so..you guys should really do something about it, such as a forbiden reserve, instead of trying apply man's sustainability on it.
sustainability works for small things, not for something as the brazilian amazon dimensions.